The backlash against RNC Chair Michael Steele has gone public. Gathering in California this week, the members of the Republican Governors Association shot some arrows back at RNC headquarters in Washington, openly calling for Steele’s replacement.
Politico‘s Jonathan Martin reports that current RGA chair and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour — whom many Republicans saw as the defacto leader of the GOP instead of Steele in the past election — was direct in his call for a change at the RNC.
“Asked in an interview…whether there should be a new chairman of the party,” Barbour “flatly said ‘Yes.'”
Barbour’s incoming replacement at the RGA, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, also “made an impassioned case” for RNC voters to put someone else in charge at the committee.
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Steele hasn’t publicly stated whether he’s running for reelection, but party insiders are stepping up their calls for a change.
Another big-name Republican publicly calling out the chair at the RGA meeting, according to Martin, was Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN).
Martin reports that “with possible RNC candidates and committee members schmoozing and strategizing,” about how to dump Steele, “the meeting felt almost as much like a party conclave as a governors’ get-together.”
